Rustic Overtones - Styles and Influences

Styles and Influences

In the earliest days of the Rustic Overtones, the band was mostly classified as a rock and soul band, citing their heaviest influences as artists such as Earth, Wind, and Fire and Tom Waits, and playing with a raw sound. However, by Rooms by the Hour, the band's sound had become much more refined and diversified, with much more of a jazz influence on songs such as "Pink Belly" and "Machine Maker," and an alternative rock feel on songs such as "The Heist" and "Kicking and Screaming". By the late '90s and into the early 2000s, the band had become heavily influenced by hip-hop music, leading to the heavy production of the entire album, a collaboration with hip-hop veterans Naughty by Nature that appeared on the rap group's 1999 album, and the Viva Nueva! song "Smoke", which when played sometimes featured a guest rapper friend of the band who rapped over an extended outtro to the song. Many believe that this radical switch of style is what contributed to the band's fallout with their Arista record deal, as the company apparently believed that the band's sound on the album would be similar to that of their older material. The band's most recent album, Light at the End, sounds most similar to the production and style of Rooms by the Hour, although the album draws from various other phases of the band's musical evolution as well.